What Is America’s Cause in the World?

"Take away this pudding; it has no theme," is a comment attributed to Winston Churchill, when a disappointing dessert was put in front of him. Writers have used Churchill's remark to describe a foreign policy that lacks coherence or centrality of purpose. For most of our lifetimes, this has not been true of the United States. The goal of our foreign policy has been understandable and defined. From 1949-1989, it was Cold War containment of the Soviet Empire and USSR. Ronald Reagan believed in a "rollback" of communism, once telling an aide that his policy might be summed up as: "We win. ...

The Mexican Basket Case

The Middle East and Asia occupy most of our foreign-policy interest these days, but relatively little attention is paid to our most important dangerous foreign contact: ...

9/11: Blowback for US Foreign Policy

With the 9/11 anniversary upon us once again, Middle East expert Robert Fisk in Beirut has written an instructive article about our predicament. He says that we have lied to ...

George W. Bush

What 9/11 Wrought: The Bush Legacy

In Cairo in 1943, when the tide had turned in the war on Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, who had embraced Joseph Stalin as an ally and acceded to his every demand, had a ...

Deeply Invested in the Middle East

With the so-called Arab Spring still shaking the Middle East like an earthquake, I don"€™t doubt that reform is needed in that region. But America's actions there are driven ...

Who Are We Fighting For?

On March 20, Pastor Terry Jones, who heads a congregation of 30 at his Dove World Outreach Center church in Gainesville, Fla., conducted a mock trial of the Quran “for ...

A Foolish and Unconstitutional War

“The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent ...

The Real War

Had he not proven incompetent to detonate his lap bomb, Umar Farouk Abdulmullatab would have carried off an air massacre to rival Lockerbie. We would all have ended Christmas day ...

Forever War

If we had it to do over, would we send an army into Afghanistan to build a nation? Would we invade Iraq? While these two wars have cost 5,200 dead, a trillion dollars and a ...

Newt’s Foreign Policy Fantasies

When Kim Jong-Il finally test launched a missile this week, I knew it was only a matter of time before some neocon would cry out for the resurrection of the Bush doctrine of ...

The Postmodern Alliance

Americans can sleep easier after months of jitters over the decisive issue in U.S. foreign policy. We"€™ve all been on edge for weeks, but it's time to take a deep breath and ...

Obama’s War

Just two months after the twin towers fell, the armies of the Northern Alliance marched into Kabul. The Taliban fled. The triumph was total in the “splendid little ...

Mumbai 2008/Sarajevo 1914

A bold terrorist attack on a peaceful city strikes fear, then horror among bystanders, then an entire nation. Gunmen barely out of their teens, sent on a clandestine one-way ...

War By Other Means

Arguably the most successful act of revolutionary terror was the June 1914 assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Believing his mission to murder the heir ...


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